Course Guidelines and Grading Policies

Use of electronics in the classroom? In a word, no. Your phone should be OFF (not set to vibrate), your music should be off, your earphones should be in your backpack, and your laptop should be used ONLY for taking notes. All other uses (surfing the web, watching videos, email, IM, texting, whatever) are distracting, disruptive of the work we are doing in the classroom, and disrespectful of your classmates and the instructor. I will call you out publicly for the first offense; at the second offense you will be banned from using even a laptop in class; on the third offense I will ask you to leave. If you lack the self-restraint to stay on task in class, then take notes on paper. Recording lectures with any device is prohibited unless you ask for and receive permission from me in writing.

Entering or Leaving the classroom during a lecture is distracting and disruptive; do not do it unless absolutely necessary. If you know you will be late, or will have to leave early, come and go by the BACK door of the lecture hall, and sit in the nearest available seat to the door, whether you know the person sitting in the next seat or not. I will assume that, as adults, we are all capable of anticipating, and managing, the need to use the bathroom without leaving the classroom during a lecture. Assume that if you must leave the lecture hall, you may not come back. If you expect an emergency communication during class, speak to me about it before lecture begins.

Grading in this course is done on a straight percentage-of-points basis, i.e., to obtain an A, you need to earn 90% or more of the available points on tests, minute papers, and other assigned activities (e.g., Twitter). The grades will not be "curved", and there will be no opportunities for "make-up" or "extra-credit" points. If you miss a test or minute paper, you will receive a score of zero. If you have a legitimate reason (e.g., a death in the family) to miss a test or minute paper, you may be excused (at the discretion of the instructor) IF AND ONLY IF you provide written documentation (for example,an obituary documenting a death in your family). In cases where you have a legitimate excuse, there still will be no make-ups administered: you will be graded only on the basis of the points contained in the tests and minute papers you did complete. NOTE that this method reduces the number of points you can afford to lose and still do well in the course.

Attendance is not taken, and is not required; however, if you miss class you may miss in-class minute papers or quizzes(see below). As noted above, there are no opportunities for making-up missed minute papers. You may also miss information I give, discussions that arise over questions asked, examples given on the spur of the moment. You are responsible, on tests, for what is said in class, as well as the materials in the reading. If you miss class, you are responsible for using the lecture materials provided above, and for getting any additional notes from lecture from a classmate: I will not re-lecture to you, one-on-one, at a later appointment. Arrive early to the next lecture, or stay a little late, and find out whether you missed a minute paper; do not ask me to meet with you outside of class to "tell you what you missed".

SICK? First, do your level best to let me know before you miss a class exercise/test. Second, if you are sick, believe me when I say that we don't want to see you in class! Please be responsible, and don't spread germs by coming to class with a fever, or hacking and coughing. For illnesses, I pro-rate your grade on the basis of the point-bearing exercises you didn't miss. If you are sick for the final YOU MUST INFORM THE OFFICE OF STUDENT SERVICES & ADVOCACY in order to be allowed to take a make-up after final exam week is over. The final exam is the only point-bearing exercise for which a make-up is possible.

These policies have been developed over years of teaching this and other courses, and are designed to ensure fair treatment of everyone by maximizing everyone's opportunity to learn, eliminating discrepancies in testing and evaluation, and by eliminating differences in the amount of study time available to students. I am very willing to discuss my reasoning for these policies, but if you try to talk me into making an exception to them for you, you will fail, and probably make me grumpy to boot.

Minute papers: are short (it takes a minute!), UNGRADED (if you write something relevant, you're good -- there are no "right" answers) responses to questions we will pose in class. They are worth 3 points each, and there will be 10 of them over the whole semester. Three points apiece may seem trivial, but it's worth remembering that, taken together, the minute papers are worth 10% of your grade, conceivably the difference between a B and an A. The questions on the minute papers are designed to provide us with feedback on your background preparation for certain material, to assess whether you understood what we just tried to teach you, and to prompt you to assess your own understanding of the material. Occasionally, instead of a minute paper, I may administer a GRADED, 3 point quiz. These will be used as practice for larger tests, to assess your knowledge and understanding, and to keep you engaged. If I see evidence that the work of the class is not being taken seriously, I will shift from ungraded minute papers to graded quizzes.

Minute papers/Quizzes, total points 30 Points

Other Required Class Activities

Every student is expected to visit the EEB Biological Collections for a tour that will introduce you to the resources and opportunities in the collection. We will offer 4 different opportunities, on different days and times. You will need to sign in at the collection; at the end of the semester, everyone who has signed in, will have 5 points added to their grade. Tours will take about 45 minutes, they meet at the south end of the Biology/Physics building lobby on the hour. You are responsible for finding a day and time to attend from the options listed below; if your class schedule prohibits you from attending any of these, you are responsible for letting me know that you will need an alternate opportunity BEFORE THE LAST WEEK OF CLASS. If you have already toured the collections (e.g., in a previous class with me or another instructor), provide me with documentation to that effect, and I will just add the 5 points to your grade without you needing to tour the collections again.

Twitter is a social networking resource that allows users to communicate in short, frequent posts. Posts ("tweets") are limited to 140 characters. I expect you to go to Twitter, sign up (a matter of giving an email address and picking a password and username), and, over the course of the semester, post at least 10 times; 5 of your posts must be up by 5 pm on March 7. Your posts should consist of any observation of birds you make that somehow relates to the content of the course. Each post should say: where you are; what you are seeing in the birdlife around you; and make the connection to the course content. For example: "Two sparrows are beating each other up outside the student union. Territoriality or dominance fight?" I must know your username in order to give you credit for Twitter post: use your first initial/last name, thus Matthew McHenry would have a user name of mmchenry. If you find your particular username is already taken, pick something logical. Once your account is in place, then use "Find People" on Twitter to locate me (type in "Margaret Rubega" or "ProfRubega")and then click on "Follow" to follow me. I will receive an autumated message informing me that you are following me, and will have a record of your user name. You MUST end every tweet with the string "#BirdClass"; that is how I will be tracking tweets, and any post without it will NOT count toward your credit. We will all be able to see every tweet generated by the class by searching on #birdclass. We will be keeping track of posting and points during the semester by tracking the posts themselves. The beauty of Twitter is that it can be posted to virtually at any time, anywhere --- it's possible to post using many types of cell phones. However, anyone with an internet connection can post from a computer, and you should be mindful (as you are responsible for) of any texting charges that posting from your phone may incur.

Twitter posting total points 30 points

Academic Rules/Conduct

All students should be aware of the guidelines on academic integrity contained in the Student Conduct Code. Click here to see the Conduct Code.

Course Guidelines Form

After you have read ALL of the above, print out and sign the Course Guidelines Form. Hand it in to Dr. Rubega no later than the end of the last lecture of the 2nd week of classes.

Questions

If you have questions, by all means collar me or email me and ask. I will post both the' questions' (questioners will be anonymous) and answers here.

Do we have to know about flight in depth?

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the question. The lecture outline, and the lecture I gave, and the minute paper we did on flight, are all indicators of the basic extent to which I expect you to know about flight. It is more likely you will do very well on the exam if you know about flight in depth (i.e., have mastered everything in the textbook on flight as well); but not having mastered every word of what's in the book does not preclude a good grade on the test.

And while we are on the subject, if you aren't sure you understand the basics of flight mechanics, this might help you understand wing-loading.

I was reviewing the Galliformes and realized that online in the chart provided it was "Family/Order" and it contains guinea fowl/quails etc. I am just wondering if because this is "family/order" and not just "family" like the other charts if we need to have these learned as well since they seem to technically be orders?

You need to know that the Galliformes are the fowl-like birds, and their major characteristics, distribution and # of species, as a group. There is a chart on the Galliform page showing the families WITHIN the Galliformes, but I am not expecting you to know the families (anything that ends in "idae" is a family) -- only the orders. I don't have any idea why that table has a header that says "Order/Family" -- I suspect it is because there is debate about whether some of those families are, in fact, orders of their own. You are only responsible for knowing the orders named as orders in Table 1.1 on that website.

I think it was mentioned in class but can not find it in my notes. In your outlines the accipitriformes which has 240 species is not on the table 1-1 of Birds. Should we considers the acciptriformes to be in the falconiformes order on the exam?

Thanks for letting me know that lecture outline and the website don't match; when in doubt, use the WEBSITE as the final word on what will be considered correct on the test. So in this case, yes, the accipters are in the Falconiiformes.

what is the difference between torpor and endotherm,thrust and drag? what is the pygostyle?

You will find that every one of those terms is defined in your text book (search for them alphabetically in the index in the back), and in the lecture outlines posted (above) on the class web page. I will not relecture here; if you don't understand why torpor and endothermy, for instance, are not the same, I suggest you re-read the section on both in your book, and my lecture outlines. If it still is not clear, then let me know, in greater detail, why they seem the same to you, so I can see where I can usefully clarify.

Online it says 5 of the twitter posts had to be done by March 2nd, but I thought I remembered you saying in class that they were not due until the midterm. I must have misread online earlier in the semester because I thought it said by the midterm.

My bad --- I DID say in lecture that you had until 5 pm yesterday, even though the online syllabus says the 2nd, and I meant to stick to the 2nd. However, as I said it, I will live by it, so everything up until 5 pm on March 7 counts. If you have done MORE than 5 by the 7th, all those will count toward the 10-tweet requirement for the semester. If you have done FEWER than 5, you can ONLY add an additional 5 tweets for credit between now and the end of the semester.

Feather Identification Resource Online! The Feather Atlas of North American Birds provided high-resolution scans of flight feathers of the major groups of birds; useful for comparison with found feathers whose origin you aren't sure of.

Images of Bird Wings Online. The Slater Museum, at the University of Puget Sound, provides high-resolution images of their entire collection of spread (open) bird wings. Useful for studying flight style as a function of wing morphology.